Attorney General Ellison wins dismissal of challenge to abortion access in Minnesota
September 3, 2025 (SAINT PAUL) — Attorney General Keith Ellison released a statement today after prevailing in his motion to dismiss a lawsuit challenging abortion access in Minnesota. On Wednesday, August 27, the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota granted the Attorney General’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by crisis pregnancy centers and their directors and a national organization of crisis pregnancy centers, which attempted to have Minnesota’s laws protecting abortion access declared unconstitutional under the United States Constitution.
"This latest attack on abortion access in Minnesota is a reminder that anti-choice interest groups are constantly seeking new ways to ban abortion or make reproductive healthcare services harder to obtain,” said Attorney General Ellison. “For decades, those anti-choice interest groups worked to erode the abortion protections provided by Roe v. Wade until they finally found a way to eliminate those protections entirely. Now, they are trying the exact same thing at the state level. These anti-abortion interest groups are well-organized and well-funded, and they have the resources to look for every possible gap in the armor protecting abortion access in our state. We cannot allow them to succeed in that mission. I am pleased to have defeated this latest attack on abortion in Minnesota, and I will do everything in my power to defend Minnesotans’ right to reproductive healthcare.”
The plaintiffs in Women's Life Care Center v. Ellison alleged that abortion is akin to terminating parental rights and that, since Minnesota does not require a judicial process to terminate parental rights prior to a patient receiving abortion care, Minnesota’s laws protecting abortion access should be struck down. The plaintiffs further sought to institute a policy requiring the same court review and involvement in abortion care as is required to terminate parental rights or in the alternative, an order requiring all abortion providers in Minnesota to cease providing abortions.
Additionally, the plaintiffs alleged they suffered reputational harm as a result of Attorney General Ellison’s consumer alert warning Minnesotans about the deceptive tactics employed by some crisis pregnancy centers.
In granting the Attorney General’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the District Court found that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the lawsuit. Standing is a threshold requirement that, to bring a lawsuit in federal court, any Plaintiff must have suffered a concrete and specific injury caused by the defendant that can be redressed through judicial relief. The Court also pointed to several serious flaws in the legal arguments made by the plaintiffs, including that plaintiffs did not even identify the specific laws they sought to challenge.
In its ruling, the Court noted:
“Plaintiffs repeatedly invoke the phrase ‘Minnesota’s abortion laws’ as the focus of their lawsuit. But they get no more specific than that... One possible target could be the series of post‐Dobbs laws passed by the Minnesota legislature, including the PRO Act. But Plaintiffs disclaim that they challenge those laws... Another potential target could be the Minnesota Constitution. But when pressed, Plaintiffs’ counsel could not identify a specific provision of the Minnesota Constitution in dispute... The Court asked whether Plaintiffs were challenging a judicial interpretation of the Minnesota Constitution, for example Gomez. But Plaintiffs’ attorney also denied challenging Gomez.”
In rejecting the Plaintiffs’ arguments that they have standing, the Court relied on the United States Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. In that case, the Court specifically rejected the exact theories for standing that the Plaintiff crisis pregnancy centers asserted in this case, including potential harm to their organizational mission, the need to expend more resources fighting for their mission, and the potential need for their doctors to treat patients post-abortion. The Supreme Court concluded that these types of alleged harm did not establish a concrete injury caused by the government’s choice to loosen regulations. Here, the crisis pregnancy centers and their owners have suffered no concrete injury as a result of Minnesota’s choice not to impose the stringent abortion regulations the centers prefer. As the Supreme Court stated in Alliance, “an organization may not establish standing simply based on the ‘intensity of the litigant’s interest’ or because of strong opposition to the government’s conduct;” and a “general, legal, moral, ideological, or policy objection to a particular government action” is not sufficient to establish standing to sue in federal court. Because the Plaintiffs suffered no concrete harm from the lack of regulation here, the Court concluded that they do not have standing and cannot pursue their claims.
Minnesota’s Constitution protects the right to obtain an abortion. Minnesota statutes, including the Protect Reproductive Options Act (“PRO Act”), passed in 2023 after Roe v. Wade was overturned, also recognize the fundamental right of Minnesotans to make autonomous decisions about their reproductive health, including the right of Minnesotans who become pregnant to continue the pregnancy and give birth or obtain an abortion.
